I am having to abandon asterisk after having used it for 2.5 years due to this problem. Every couple of days (sometimes more often, sometimes less), the machine will lock up because the TDM board or the Dahdi driver goes south. /var/log/messages starts filling up with repeated messages: kernel: TDM PCI Master abort The card I have is: *CLI> dahdi show status Description Alarms IRQ bpviol CRC4 Wildcard TDM400P REV I Board 5 OK 0 0 0 I asked about this once before and I am asking again in desperation, as I have had to shut off my asterisk server, take all the VOIP phones out of service, and go back to the bad old days of a single cordless phone base with a couple of handsets and a crappy old WalMart answering machine. This sucks. Last time I asked, the most helpful answer I got was privately, saying that either my card is bad, or I might need a different motherboard (but there is no way I know of to know which motherboards would work and which would not; the last thing I would want is to go through the expense and major hassle of swapping motherboards only to find out that the problem is not fixed). The only decent diagnostic I have is that if I catch it soon enough, before the system totally locks up, then stopping asterisk, restarting dahdi, and starting asterisk gets things working again (until the next incident). Also, I can go into asterisk -r and do "dahdi show status" and the card doesn't have any alarms; the output is the same as above, even as the PCI Master abort messages are spewing into the syslog. If my Wildcard TDM board is bad, is there anything I can do about it, or am I just S.O.L. after this much time? The blasted card costs as much as a new machine; either way I can't afford it right now. I don't want to abandon asterisk as it has so many nice features, but I am running low on alternatives at the moment. --Greg
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Greg Woods <greg at gregandeva.net> wrote:> I am having to abandon asterisk after having used it for 2.5 years due > to this problem. Every couple of days (sometimes more often, sometimes > less), the machine will lock up because the TDM board or the Dahdi > driver goes south. /var/log/messages starts filling up with repeated > messages: > > kernel: TDM PCI Master abort > > The card I have is: > > *CLI> dahdi show status > Description Alarms IRQ bpviol > CRC4 > Wildcard TDM400P REV I Board 5 OK 0 0 > 0 > > > I asked about this once before and I am asking again in desperation, as > I have had to shut off my asterisk server, take all the VOIP phones out > of service, and go back to the bad old days of a single cordless phone > base with a couple of handsets and a crappy old WalMart answering > machine. This sucks. > > Last time I asked, the most helpful answer I got was privately, saying > that either my card is bad, or I might need a different motherboard (but > there is no way I know of to know which motherboards would work and > which would not; the last thing I would want is to go through the > expense and major hassle of swapping motherboards only to find out that > the problem is not fixed). > > The only decent diagnostic I have is that if I catch it soon enough, > before the system totally locks up, then stopping asterisk, restarting > dahdi, and starting asterisk gets things working again (until the next > incident). Also, I can go into asterisk -r and do "dahdi show status" > and the card doesn't have any alarms; the output is the same as above, > even as the PCI Master abort messages are spewing into the syslog. > > If my Wildcard TDM board is bad, is there anything I can do about it, or > am I just S.O.L. after this much time? The blasted card costs as much as > a new machine; either way I can't afford it right now. I don't want to > abandon asterisk as it has so many nice features, but I am running low > on alternatives at the moment. > > --Greg > >How many lines are you talking about? In light of your budget issues, I would switch to quality SIP provider and have my numbers ported. That would most likely be cheaper in the long and short run, and more reliable depending on the vendor and your internet connection. Other options are going back to old versions of Asterisk. What version are you running? What was wrong with the version from 1.5 years ago? Maybe your card likes being a Zap device, rather than a DAHDI. You could make a cron job to reboot the machine at midnight, daily. I have a box full of Digium cards with all sorts of modules, I could "sell" you what you need for the price of postage but I really think SIP is your silver bullet. I push over $12k a week of outbound traffic through VoicePulse (never would of considered this a year or two ago) with absolutely no issues. Vitelity is pretty good and low priced as well but I have never used them anywhere near the above. Best of luck in this economy, Steve Totaro -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20091221/f8c46022/attachment.htm
My experience with Sangoma cards has been amazing. They always provide support to not only Asterisk based systems but also to others. They are just amazing and as their slogan says, "because it must work" it just does without failiure. I never used a Digium card, but I never seen any other company with so much free support available. On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Greg Woods <greg at gregandeva.net> wrote:> I am having to abandon asterisk after having used it for 2.5 years due > to this problem. Every couple of days (sometimes more often, sometimes > less), the machine will lock up because the TDM board or the Dahdi > driver goes south. /var/log/messages starts filling up with repeated > messages: > > kernel: TDM PCI Master abort > > The card I have is: > > *CLI> dahdi show status > Description Alarms IRQ bpviol > CRC4 > Wildcard TDM400P REV I Board 5 OK 0 0 > 0 > > > I asked about this once before and I am asking again in desperation, as > I have had to shut off my asterisk server, take all the VOIP phones out > of service, and go back to the bad old days of a single cordless phone > base with a couple of handsets and a crappy old WalMart answering > machine. This sucks. > > Last time I asked, the most helpful answer I got was privately, saying > that either my card is bad, or I might need a different motherboard (but > there is no way I know of to know which motherboards would work and > which would not; the last thing I would want is to go through the > expense and major hassle of swapping motherboards only to find out that > the problem is not fixed). > > The only decent diagnostic I have is that if I catch it soon enough, > before the system totally locks up, then stopping asterisk, restarting > dahdi, and starting asterisk gets things working again (until the next > incident). Also, I can go into asterisk -r and do "dahdi show status" > and the card doesn't have any alarms; the output is the same as above, > even as the PCI Master abort messages are spewing into the syslog. > > If my Wildcard TDM board is bad, is there anything I can do about it, or > am I just S.O.L. after this much time? The blasted card costs as much as > a new machine; either way I can't afford it right now. I don't want to > abandon asterisk as it has so many nice features, but I am running low > on alternatives at the moment. > > --Greg > > > > _______________________________________________ > -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- > > asterisk-users mailing list > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/attachments/20091221/978a8917/attachment.htm
> the machine will lock up because the TDM board or the Dahdi > driver goes south. /var/log/messages starts filling up with repeated > messages: > > kernel: TDM PCI Master abortThank you to everyone who has taken the time to reply. First I am going to apply the "fix what you know is broken" principle. I have been having issues with the display as well. Since this machine is primarily a server, and the only thing I use the console for is Amarok (it is the house music player), the fact that the text consoles stop working has never been a big issue. CTRL-ALT-F2 produces a blank screen, but the console is really there because I can log in as root and type commands that do get executed, although it's a bit tricky when I can't see what I'm typing. So something is wrong with the display. The video card is a PCI-E card. I don't know how directly the E bus connects to the regular PCI bus, but it's entirely possible that a flaky video card is the whole problem. So I replaced it. Too early to tell if that helps; if I go a few days without any more issues, I'll know that was it. It may not fix the issue, but it was easy and cheap and it needed to be tried anyway for other reasons. This is the price I pay for running a home system where cost is a major issue. I can't afford to have special-purpose servers one for each use; not only is money an issue, but also space and power, so my servers fulfill multiple functions. I realize this is not ideal, and that it would be much better to have the asterisk server dedicated to nothing else, but that isn't a realistic option for me. Up until recently it has always been rock solid. Steve Totaro <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com> wrote:> In light of your budget issues, I would switch to quality SIP provider > and have my numbers ported.That is a possibility, but finding a quality SIP provider is one issue. I use Teliax over IAX as a backup but have never gotten caller ID to work properly and the sound quality just isn't as good as my POTS line. The other issue is that this puts all my eggs in the Comcast basket. I am reluctant to remove my Qwest land line and have everything depend on Comcast. This also makes it impossible to use the phones without the server machine being up (and asterisk being up), also undesirable (although using the cell phones in that situation is also a possibility). But it is an option. It is a more attractive option if the alternative turns out to be replacing expensive hardware. Lastly there is the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), that always has to be considered for home projects. She is the one who doesn't like the sound quality of Teliax. Another provider MIGHT be better but I have no way of knowing, and she won't be happy knowing that we don't have an easy workaround for the house phones if asterisk is down. So this provides another motivation to keep the POTS line if I can do it without a major expense. As far as she is concerned, we don't need asterisk. I like it because I'm a geek and it's cool, and she's OK with that as long as it works. She does enjoy having her messages e-mailed to her, having separate mailboxes, etc., so she does understand the value of these geek projects of mine (MythTV is cool too, a single button press to miss all the annoying commercials), but first and foremost it has to be reliable and at least fulfill the basic functionality. But the WAF has certainly been dropping lately due to all the problems I am having.> > Other options are going back to old versions of Asterisk. What > version > > are you running?I am already running 1.4 because I have encountered this bug with 1.6: https://issues.asterisk.org/view.php?id=15129 That pretty much prevents inbound calls from working, so I have already had to go back to 1.4 . I am using the asterisk14-1.4.26.3-87 version from ATrpms. I have thought about trying 1.6 with the old zaptel drivers, but that isn't any better as a workaround than what I am already doing, so I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. Darrick Hartman <dhartman at djhsolutions.com> wrote:> Why don't you contact Digium tech support?I have hesitated to do that because my card is fairly old now, but I would certainly do that before permanently abandoning my POTS line or replacing expensive hardware. Steve Tatoro and Bruce Nik recommended Sangoma cards. That is only important if it comes down to replacing the hardware at cost. I am hoping to avoid that. Tilghman Lesher <tlesher at digium.com> wrote:> You could try purchasing just the base TDM410 card and move your old > modules > over from the old card to the new. A little looking around has > revealed > somebody selling a "like new" card for $139:Thank you for that information; I didn't know that was an option. My fear with something like this is that if there is a hardware problem that necessitates replacing the card, I don't really have any way of knowing if the problem is in the base card or in one of the modules, so I might end up doing a lot of work and not fixing the issue.> Full disclosure, here: I do work for Digium, which makes the TDM410. > I'll > additionally make the guarantee that if the card doesn't work for you, > I'll > buy the TDM410 base card from you, for the same price that you paid. > How's > that for a no-risk offer?Thank you very much. If I do decide to go this route, I'll certainly take you up on that offer. But the cost of the new card isn't the only cost of hardware replacement. I'm primarily a software guy rather than hardware, so hardware replacement projects always take a lot more time and are a lot more hassle for me than they are for people who are more experienced with hardware, so I am still hoping to avoid this. --Greg